http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20573208

This'll be frothier than their output

There are simple solutions and that is to add a massive withholding tax on inter company payments. So if you send money out then they pay 40% tax on top, a bit like VAT except there is no reclaimable amount. So if they sent £1m in "management fees" or "licensing rights" or even "coffee beans" they pay another 40% to the HMRC. It is not reclaimable and has no offsetting allowance. If they have paid full corporation tax then they are exempt for the withholding tax for that same accounting period.

You can't really blame Starbucks for exploiting a system that allows them to avoid paying tax. What corporation in it's right mind is going to volunteer to pay more than it absolutely must?

Blame successive governments for not addressing the problem, and getting consistently reamed by big business.

Quite. The fault is surely with those who naively expected a large corporation to act in a 'moral' way despite a century's evidence to the contrary.

if you want a corporation to do the right thing, you have to force them to. Otherwise, self-interest will rule.

+1 Yet this government will do nothing to address the issue. It is far better for the Nasty party to slash benefits and raise the taxes from the majority of people, who can not move abroad to mitigate their tax bill.

I'd apply that to most individuals too.

The whole Jimmy Carr thing didn't bother me at all, I know if I was in the same position I would have done it, it's not illegal after all to avoid paying tax where you don't have to, If I said for every £1 you earn you have to give me 10p or 50p, I don't think it's a difficult to figure out which option you would choose!

Yes but Jimmy was paying closer to 1p not even 10p or 50p.

There are many tips and tricks to minimising your tax bill. When I went to a conference on locumming as a GP, there were things we could write off against tax, set up ourselves as a business and take a sub £10k salary so most of the money was in the company and we would pay very little if any tax. For some people, these are legitimate ways to reduce your tax bill. For others, they are loopholes.

I think the argument is becoming a bit more black & white than even that. It's now less about whether you/they reduce your tax bill by legal means as whether you/they are paying the amount of tax that is seen as being 'about right'. Most working people pay somewhere around 30-40% of their gross income out in tax & NI via PAYE before they see it themselves, so they don't see they have any room for choice or opportunity for avoidance. Therefore intuitively they expect corporations to pay roughly the same rate of tax on their profits. People see companies having the choice to pay less tax while individual people don't as not being 'fair'. How much tax the finer points of law say they should pay really doesn't come into it.

What you described was a loophole why do you think so many self employed have problems if they have long contracts?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012 ... nch-breaks

well someone has to pay for the increased tax bill ...

How much of that is actually legal? Well makes it easier for me to go to a local independent rather than a franchise.

Well, I can only hope that this develops into a Ratner moment for them. The court of public opinion can be harsh at times, although it is often depressingly apathetic.

Indeed - because the Lovely Labour party did a fabulous job of implementing fairer taxes and standing up to big business...

[/sarcasm]

Well they were just as culpable of turning the UK into a tax avoiders paradise.